Birobidjan
Discovering another Jewish community is always exciting to me, this time a trip around the world to Russia‘s far far East. From the moment I arrived the strange language and the people looked and sounded familiar.
My grandparents immigrated from Russia to Israel during the Iron Curtain, which meant they had to leave their families behind, never knowing if they would meet again. I looked around and thought about the families who broke apart. I thought about my grandparents, this country they came from, a culture so different and yet I feel so close to it.
A place stuck in the past, a perfectly preserved time-capsule of of the communist era. It‘s mostly populated with older people living alone and appear lonely, they miss the communist regime, but are also fearful it might return.
In Birobidjan the Soviet power still echos, walking through the huge entrance you can‘t help but feeling humbled and small. Today, only one percent of the town‘s population is Jewish. The Jewish sovereignty of the town revolves mostly around the Yiddish language. It is what is used on signs and what is spoken on the street corners, instantly distinguishing who is Jewish. The street names still show the grand Jewish connection to the town, Jewish customs are still performed at the local schools and in the streets.
I returned wondering what would have happened if history went another way? How powerful can a country‘s choice of regime be, changing, influencing, terrorizing and bounding its citizens.
The gates opened and Birobidjan joined the world, and this time it was still open for me to have an educating, memorable and powerful experience, but will it stay open to the west?
